Quantstamp: Ethereums long needed upgrade

quantstamp.com

There’s a new kid on the block(chain) who is going to change the game for smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.

If you have been around in the crypto space for a while, you might have heard about the massive DAO hack in June 2016, which was followed by a more recent hack in July 2017, totaling to a loss of $85 million. Both hacks could have been avoided, as they happened due to human error in the smart contracts.

The true essence of blockchain technology is the concept of trustlessness when transferring value. It’s computer code that handles transactions, without having to trust any human.

Today’s “not-so-smart” Contracts

Ethereum’s smart contracts are running on the Ethereum blockchain, which guarantees that contracts are executed exactly as they have been written. Thus, without human interference.

BUT, the actual smart contract that is uploaded onto the Ethereum Blockchain is written by humans. Therefor exposed to human error, intentional and unintentional.

To validate smart contracts today, we have to engage security consulting companies with human experts to audit the smart contracts. This is not only costly, it also keeps exposing the contracts to human errors. Additionally it centralizes the trust onto the engaged security companies, which is the complete opposite of what blockchain stands for.

Welcome to the Future of Smart-Contracts

It does this by creating a scalable and cost-effective system to audit all smart-contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, using an off-chain network that works similar to proof-of-work style mining. In order to audit a contract, nodes audit or “mine” contracts by making them part of the mathematical problem solving process to create a new block. Once the block is solved, the contract author receives a report of possible vulnerabilities.

Automating the auditing process requires the Quantstamp protocol to have a security library to draw from, which, in old blockchain fashion, is agreed upon consensus of all nodes.

But that’s not all! Quantstamp also incentives white and black hat hackers to contribute to the overall security of the system. It does this by providing bounty rewards for bugs that the automation didn’t detect.

Looking at the future of blockchain, and the possibilities it offers to better our world by outsmarting corruption, it is clear that we absolutely need a technology that does not rely on humans. Quantstamp is bringing exactly that to the Ethereum protocol. It’s a necessary upgrade to make smart-contracts actually smart. And in the long run Quantstamp aims to be completely incorporated into the Ethereum protocol.